


wend your way in war-attire

by perfectlight



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Gallifrey, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-26 03:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlight/pseuds/perfectlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It could never be a fairy tale, because he is all that remains to tell it, and no fairy tale is ever told by the monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wend your way in war-attire

**_wend your way in war-attire_ **

 

_My monster_ , Ada had called him. The words pounded like a double-beating heart, and he could not make them go away.

 

\--

 

He doesn’t realize, or perhaps he doesn’t want to realize. What he was before the war (before the fire, before time shattered and burned) will never be _him_ again – and what he is now will never be who he once was. These thoughts, they loop through his mind and choke him, when he remembers what he has done, what he has caused, when he has laughed. 

 

\--

 

It could never be a fairy tale, because he is all that remains to tell it, and no fairy tale is ever told by the monster. The monster is supposed to die in the end, the hero saves the kingdom.

 

Not the other way around.

 

\--

 

Sometimes he doesn’t remember, exactly. He thinks, when he dares to think on these things, which is only ever in the night or deepest shadow – he thinks perhaps it’s better that way. Perhaps, unconsciously, he is saving himself from an even deeper madness than that which he now exists in (has existed in, will exist in). Perhaps to forget the pieces, to forget how the stories connected, to forget why time fragmented here and healed there, is the only way to keep the kingdom safe from the monster. The only way to keep the kingdom whole in his mind.

 

\--

 

In his memory, it is not burning. When he thinks of Gallifrey, when he sees the loops of his own dead language, he does not think of genocide unmatched in any reality, does not think of fire and collapsing citadels and everyone he killed (Susan, his Susan; his wife, he can’t remember her name now; his children, who he keeps as far back in his mind as he can, tucked away safely, and sleeping; and Clara, he now knows, the Clara who gave him his TARDIS, who made him the Doctor, in a way) – no, he thinks of gleaming domes of glass, of orange and red blending and streaming in a painted sky, thinks of mountaintops and heavy robes and how it felt, once, to have a family.

 

\--

 

He does not tell anyone about these things – not even River, not even once – because the Doctor knows, and knows it with a loneliness forever gnawing at his bones, that only he will ever understand, _can_ ever understand, and when he dies, Gallifrey will die with him.

 

So the monster does not only run from the kingdom he destroyed, but from the mere memory of it – and yet he runs to save it, too, to save himself, to save them all, in the only way that’s left.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from _Beowulf._.


End file.
